On the occasion of the 5-year anniversary in Zurich (the gallery was founded 2006 in Los Angeles and is since 2010 located in Zurich) the gallery launches a biennial exhibition format that takes the pleasure of looking as its starting and focal point. In optometry, 20/20 vision stands for optimal visual acuity, and it points to the creative principle behind the exhibition: 20 experts (10 national/10 international) were each invited to nominate one artist who in their opinion has not yet received the recognition he or she deserves.

At the same time, the artists’ understanding of themselves and their approach to the photographic medium corresponds to our interest as a gallery: the focus is on contemporary creators of art who – within the context of contemporary art – have occupied themselves in diverse ways and intensively with photographic techniques, without thereby reducing themselves and their work to their medium. 20/20vision does not show photographic trends, instead, it strives for an inspiring juxtaposition of various artists, experts, concepts and techniques. With this broad presentation of contemporary approaches to photography, we want to support not only artistic talent but also a strategy for dealing with the flood of images: allowing ourselves to be guided by curiosity, sharing our enthusiasm, setting out on a search together and recommending what we find to others. The exhibition and the present publication are an invitation to you to direct your attention to the selected works and to let the flood flow past.

The enthusiastic dedication of the following participating curators and its artists has been decisive in making this ambitious exhibition project possible:

A Blind Man in His Garden is the fourth in a series of pilot exhibitions organised by POOL, featuring works from the collections of Maja Hoffmann and Michael Ringier.
The exhibition will be curated by de Appel alumni Kris Dittel (b. 1983, Slovakia) and
Emma Panza (b. 1985, Italy) and mentored by Lorenzo Benedetti, Director at de Appel
arts center, Amsterdam.

How to deal with the impossibility of experiencing an artwork or constellation of artworks to its fullest? If our understanding of it is always fragmented, based on factual information, a compressed image in a database or newspaper, lessons learnt and forgotten, can we allow our sensations and intuitions to take over our imagination?

A Blind man in His Garden is an exhibition that emphasizes individual narrative, and puts forward a reading of an artwork, or exhibition, based on personal associations, previous knowledge and encounters. A Blind Man in His Garden is also a photograph by Joel Sternfeld, which represents the potential of artworks to trigger single or multiple narratives.

SCHEUBLEIN + BAK celebrates the rediscovery of a very important and long neglected artistic movement and shows a comprehensive historical presentation of the beginnings of concrete and generative Photography in the 1960s. During that time a market for photography did barely exist in Europe. Therefore most works in the show ‘Against Photography’ are unique prints. This important movement in Germany and Switzerland set the ground-breaking footprint for the birth of computer aesthetic and cybernetic art, which retrospectively can be regarded as the beginning of the discourse on data images and digital photography.

While in the theory of painting the term Concrete Art was invented by Theo van Doesburg as early as the 1920s and was practiced by artists such as Max Bill, Camille Graeser and Richard Paul Lohse in Zurich, the notion Photographie Concrète only appeared in 1967 for the first time at galerie actuelle in Berne, where a group of photographic works by Roger Humbert, René Mächler, Rolf Schroeter and Jean Frédéric Schnyder was shown. Relating to the experimental photographers such as Christian Schad, Man Ray, Alvin Langdon Coburn und Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the Swiss group of concrete photographers was making playful camera-less luminograms and photograms. In the current show, rare prints by Mächler and Humbert are being exhibited.

During that time, similar tendencies in photography came up in Germany as well, which later became known as Generative Photography. Mentors of this group were Herbert W. Franke, a pioneer of computer art, who combined rational physics and mathematics with photographic experiments, as well as philosopher Max Bense, based in Stuttgart, whose program aimed “at generative aesthetic conditions, which fragmented what was generated into many individual parts, finitely distinguishable and describable.”

Based on this philosophical term, Kunsthaus Bielefeld opened the legendary group show Generative Fotografie presenting works by Gottfried Jäger, Hein Gravenhorst, Kilian Breier and Pierre Cordier in 1968. Generative photography can be understood as a part of concrete photography on the one side. Moreover, it articulates the idea of artistic constructivism onto which has been grafted the numerical programming of apparative systems. Unique chemigrams from its founder Cordier, camera-less luminograms by Zero artist Breier, photomechanical transformations by Gravenhorst and pinhole structures by Jäger are shown in the gallery and bring us back to the founding years.

The exhibitions of Heinz Hajek-Halke and micro photographers Carl Strüwe and Manfred P. Kage, initiated by Jäger in 1965 and 1966 in Bielefeld, would eventually trigger a separate class of photography at the Werkkunstschule in Bielefeld. Since then Gottfried Jäger und Karl Martin Holzhäuser were teaching the theory of generative photography over decades, and together they published the manifesto-like compendium Generative Fotografie.

The notion “to play against the apparatus" by theorist and philosopher Villém Flusser set the tone for this particular style of photography. The yearly symposiums on photography in Bielefeld have become legendary over the course of thirty years and have transmitted ideas, which have radiated on the art of younger generation artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans, Thomas Ruff and James Welling. A selection of rare cliché-verre works by Hajek-Halke, oszillograms by Franke, mechano-optical experiments by Holzhäuser as well as microscopic images by ZERO artist Kage and Strüwe showcase the overwhelming creativity of these artists as well as their strong relation to science.

Rarely shown vintage works from the archives recall the spirit on this historic moment in this exhibition, and point out surprising connections to Switzerland.

The Portuguese artist Carlos Bunga (b. 1976 in Porto, lives in Barcelona) has become famous in recent years for his architectural interventions with cardboard and adhesive strips. Having started with painting, Bunga soon expanded on his original artistic practice by adding different media, such as collage, drawing, performance, sculpture, and video. His artistic engagement focuses on architecture and the urban space, as well as on living conditions in our time, which are characterized by constant change, as is also evident in his choice of materials: variable and ephemeral forms of dwelling can be produced quickly with simple means. Bunga's exhibition title “I am a Nomad” refers not only to his nomadism in terms of art media, but also to a way of living that is widespread in times of globalization.

For his exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Carlos Bunga has conceived a site-specific walk-through installation of cardboard, paint, and adhesive strips, on the 5th floor. One room on the 4th floor is devoted to the drawings, sculptures and video works that Bunga develops in response to his installations. This exhibition is the first presentation in Switzerland by this artist, who has been nominated for the Artes-Mundi Art Prize 2014.

The exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv is this artist’s first solo show in Switzerland. A comprehensive artist’s book was also being released.

The South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955 in Johannesburg) is one of the most highly regarded artists of our time. Museum Haus Konstruktiv is presenting this exceptional artist's first comprehensive solo exhibition to be held in Switzerland. Here, the focus is on the multimedia cycle of works entitled “The Nose”, which is based on the eponymous surreal short story written by Nikolai Gogol in 1836. In 2006, the Metropolitan Opera in New York commissioned William Kentridge to stage Dmitri Shostakovich's opera of the same name (first performed in 1930 in Leningrad). In this context, a series of works were produced, which can be categorized as visual art, theater and film.

In addition to the large-scale video installation “I am not me, the horse is not mine”, which has previously been shown, for instance, at London's Tate Modern in 2012, Museum Haus Konstruktiv is also exhibiting a number of little-known drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures and tapestries. Kentridge himself describes this work-complex as an elegy for the artistic language of the Russian constructivists and their stimuli for social transformation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in German and English with essays by William Kentridge, Jane Taylor and Sabine Schaschl, published by “Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König”.